


And the Angels Wouldn't Help You

by skatedaddy



Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Bad Parenting, Dream Logic, Mild Gore, Ominous, Religion and Faith, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 04:52:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12574120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skatedaddy/pseuds/skatedaddy
Summary: Faith is fragile.





	And the Angels Wouldn't Help You

Richie watches dusk set in from behind the glass panes of his window; a shade of dusty purple envelops the sky, a sea of lavender that bled into pink where the sun had dipped out below the horizon. He’s sad, that quiet kind of sad that seems to land on your shoulder and nest deep into your bones. The kind of sad that you wish you could pick off, like a scab, but you know that would only result in more bleeding. 

When he was a child, his parents had taken him to church. Every week he had sat through sunday school, learned his gospels, learned the story of Jonah and the Whale, of Noah and his Ark. He had learned that faith was a powerful thing, that God had created the Heavens and the Earth in seven glorious days, and then he had rested. He had learned of Jesus, crucified on the cross, only to rise three days later. When he had made friends with Stanley Uris, the only other boy in his class who sat by himself at lunch, his father had been the one to remind him that Stan’s people killed Christ. Richie didn’t understand what that meant, because the Stan Uris he knew wouldn’t hurt a fly, much less crucify the son of God. 

Richie had been spoon fed the word of the Lord, and for a long time he accepted it blindly. His mother filled the home with statues and portraits of angels, and for a long time Richie believed their lifeless eyes to follow him as he walked about the room. _God is always watching,_ his mother told him. _God is all knowing, and God is all loving._

Richie can still hear the sound of church bells, on nights where the air is quiet and still. _The angels only protect you if you believe in them, Richard._ His mother was an expert on all things related to faith. For a while, it was nice for Richie to believe that there were actually angels that watched over them. He’d picture them high in the clouds, softly fingering harps made of gold and silver, their pale wings a magnificent sight. Opposite his bed, his mother had hung a portrait of a beautiful angel, carefully watching over a young boy and a young girl. Richie would look up at it at night, a child buried under a mountain of blankets, and wonder if having the angel there would protect him, and whether or not the angel could hear the sound of his breath, or maybe even see inside his dreams.

As Richie grows, his understanding of religion and divinity begin to change. The first thing that that worms it’s way into his mind, sends waves of unease running through him, is the concept of Hell. He asks his father one day, standing on his tip toes at the kitchen sink and washing the dishes from dinner, “If God is all loving, why is there such a thing as Hell?”

His father, who was reading the newspaper at the kitchen table, cup of coffee in hand, had grunted at him. “God only sends people to Hell if they break his rules and sin.”

“But isn’t God all forgiving?” Richie had asked. It was the type of curiosity that was accustomed to a child of his age, but it seemed to irritate his father, who lifted his head to frown at him. 

“God forgives those who repent for their sins. Now, stop talking and finish the dishes.”

Richie had bit his tongue, though he had plenty more questions. He was struggling with the fact that an all loving, all forgiving God would create a place like Hell and send the children he created in his image there for an eternity of pain and suffering. Why would God create such a place, and what made one bound for Hell? Did breaking one of the comdenments mean you were going to Hell? Richie had stolen candy from Mr. Keene’s drugstore a few times; did that mean his soul was bound to suffer endlessly in a lake of fire? Where was the line drawn?

That night, Richie had laid awake in his bed crying. His gaze fell on the portrait of the angel, and although she was beautiful he felt sad and scared and strangely lonely. Richie was struggling to understand why a God with nothing to offer but love would create a place of such misery and torture. He thinks back now on the stories he knows of the Bible, not the big ones like Daniel and the lion but the ones his teachers had glossed over, the part of the Bible they didn’t want to think represented their faith. He thinks of the Book of Job; hadn’t God made a bet with the Devil, allowed Job’s children to be killed, his life stripped away? How do you kill a child in the name of love? It doesn’t make sense to Richie. What kind of a God inflicts so much pain and sadness on his people? The idea scares him. He thinks of Herod the Great, slaughtering all those babies in Matthew, and it scares him. His sunday school teachers had always glossed over that part, hadn’t they? What about Sodom and Gomorrah, or the locusts with their disturbing human faces and crowns of gold upon their head? Yes, the locusts had always given Richie nightmares, hadn’t they? Teeth like that of a lion, stringers like a scorpion. He’d wake up in a cold sweat from dreams of them crawling around in his bed, onto his chest, into his mouth.

Richie’s tears had soaked his pillow, his heart had thumped in his throat. He felt afraid because he truly wondered now if his God wasn’t something much more malevolent than the all loving divinity he had been made to worship.

From then on, Richie not only questioned his faith but began to reject it. It wasn’t that he didn’t entirely believe in a higher power; it was more like he began to question its intentions. He looked around at the world before him and saw a lot of pain and suffering. Sure, there was beauty, there were tall pine trees and snow covered mountains and fields of bright flowers. But there was sadness, and suffering, and loss, and _evil._ The more you grow, the more you become attuned to all that evil around you. Most people block that perception out; they forget about things that disturb them and move on. Richie doesn’t, or maybe, he can’t. When his gym teacher gets arrested for molesting a student, a kid a few years younger than Richie, it makes him wonder what kind of God that man worshiped, and what kind of God would allow that to ever happen in the first place. When a man four streets away from Richie comes home one night from the bar and shoots his wife and himself in the head with his shotgun, Richie wonders if that was part of God’s plan, and hasn’t there been enough bloodshed in the name of his Holy Grace? 

His mother catches on to his wavering faith and attempts to remedy the situation by practically choking him with the word of the Lord. She sits him in a chair in their dining room for hours, going through glass after glass of wine while she recites passages from the Bible. The angel statues always watch, from their spots on the table, and the buffet, and the mantle above the fireplace. Richie isn’t allowed to talk, or to move. It gets rather uncomfortable rather quick, but the more he squirms and scratches at himself, the more his mother reads. If she gets bored of that, or doesn’t have the time, she’ll sometimes lock him in the cupboard underneath the staircase and have him copy bible verses into a notebook. Richie absolutely _hates_ that, and it only makes his dissatisfaction with his faith grow. Inside the closet is a statue of angel, made of stone that seems close to ancient, it’s hands clasped together in prayer. Richie could always feel it watching him, and an idea that used to be comforting now makes him sick with fear. He takes down the painting of the angel across from his bed and stops going to church, much to his mother’s disliking. _If you stray from your faith, God will turn his back on you, Richard._

Richie is sixteen now, watching dusk break, and he doesn’t get locked in cupboards so much anymore. He leans over to crack open the window and then lights a cigarette, puffing the smoke out into the cold air. Snow is falling lightly outside, dancing towards the ground, all the more prominent in the orange halo of the streetlight outside his house. In the distance he can hear cars, and one of his neighbor’s dogs barking. The air coming in has the cold, fresh quality that came with December, carrying in the smell of frost and pines. The houses down the street are all lit up with Christmas lights, and even though he’s not huge on the religious concept of Christmas, he thinks the twinkling frozen landscape looks very pretty. The sound of Christmas music starts up from somewhere, faint but still there, like it was carried in on a breeze.

There’s a certain type of exhaustion that’s bleeding into his skin, and it makes him want to crawl into bed and sleep, although it’s only 8:30. He wishes he could understand why he feels so lonely, since it was only hours ago he was hanging out with his friends. It’s heavy and unsettling. He finds himself wishing that his parents were better company, and that there wasn’t such a tension in the house, between his lack of faith and his mother’s drinking problem. His parents were fighting again right now, the kind they did when they think they’re being quiet but really aren’t. Richie was doing his best to block it out; he didn’t want to hear his father going over the amount of money they’re spending on liquor, or his mother retaliating with a list of reasons why she drinks, most of them involving him or Richie. 

As he watches the smoke of his cigarette carry out the window, he is suddenly struck with the memory of his grandmother’s funeral. It had happened three years ago, but the image of her face, grey and stiff in the casket, was still burnt into his mind. Chills run down his spine as he remembers the purple swelling under her eyes, and how cold she had been when he reached down and touched her. That was the moment Richie had decided he never wanted to touch a dead body again. She was so rigid, so frozen. Richie stood in the church that day and felt absolutely nothing but death surrounding him. There was no God, there was no holiness, there was no light. It was like a heavy black cloud was looming over him, one that had come in wearing a black cloak and sucked away all the glory like a black hole until there was nothing left but ringing emptiness. God wasn’t in the church that day, or in the cemetery as her casket was lowered into the earth by a contraception Richie had never seen before. She was down there forever now, buried underneath the dirt, while worms and maggots ate away at her face. 

Richie stubs out his cigarette and runs a hand through his hair with a shaky sigh. His forehead is sweaty but cool. He thinks he should probably go to bed, and so he shuts the window and curls up under his blanket. He can still hear his parents arguing, and for a long time he just lays there, unable to get comfortable or get any sleep.

When Richie wakes up, he’s not in his bed anymore. He’s not quite sure where he is at first, he only knows that what he’s laying on his _hard._ He sits up, stretching his back, and looks around; he’s laying on a pew. The church he’s in is dark, except for about twenty candles lit on the altar, wax melting and dripping down their sides while their flames wax and wane. The altar is littered with statues of Christ, of angels, of the Virgin Mary. Tall stained glass windows line the walls on both sides, dark from behind but visible in the candlelight, each depicting some famous biblical scene. To the left of the altar is a large church organ, it’s pipes gleaming gold. The walls are made of stone, old and cracked; every couple feet down are small stone fountains, gurgling with ancient waters. The room feels very big and very cold. It’s feels so awfully lonely in here that Richie starts to cry, but as he goes to wipe his nose with his sleeve he realizes that he’s not alone. Sitting on the same pew from him, about fifteen feet away, is a dark figure. It’s shape is that of a human, but it has no form or features, it is merely an empty shadow. For a moment Richie is paralyzed with fear; his mouth his dry, his legs lock up, there’s no way he could run if he wanted to. Then, an odd sense of calmness washes over him.

The figure, or entity, or whatever it was, gets up. It stands at about eight feet tall, it’s body long and slender. Richie then realizes that it does have one feature, after all. A smile, a leering, toothy smile, far too large for the shape of it’s head. When it speaks, it speaks in the voice of a young child, a little girl. 

“I think you should come with me,” it tells him, and then begins moving between pews. For a second Richie is unsure, but as the figure continues heading away from him he forces his legs to start working. He’s both afraid and unafraid, like something doesn’t _want_ him to be afraid, as he follows the creature towards the door in the back of the church. The door is as old as everything else and heavy. It’s made of thick dark wood with deep, ornate carvings. The shadow just disappears through the door like it wasn’t there at all; Richie has to struggle to open it. 

He finally manages to push his way out and finds himself emerging into the strangest forest he’s ever seen. It’s dark, but there’s a gaseous green light coming from somewhere, some unidentifiable source Richie can’t discern. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he can smell the thickness of the vegetation surrounding him. He spots the shadow figure again, bathed in green light, and starts to run after him. He nearly trips on the roots of tree and slows down; he doesn’t want to get too close to the entity, anyway. “Hurry up,” it says, and this time it’s not the voice of a child anymore but the voice of his friend Bill Denbrough. Only it wasn’t _exactly_ Bill’s voice, and something about it bothers Richie, bothers him deeply in a way he couldn’t explain or summarize if he tried. It turns it’s head around again to smile at him, it’s teeth shining white against it’s own foggy darkness. 

As they make their way along, Richie takes in his surroundings. The trees towering above him, their roots growing under his feet, everything is so ancient. Vines hang low and thick, and he can’t see the stars above the canopy. He wonders where he is for a moment but then comes to understand something. _It’s the Garden of Eden,_ he thinks. _It has been the whole time._ Only it wasn’t the paradise he always pictured; it was dark and lonely and he suspected the atmosphere was toxic. It seemed like a place where faith came to die.

It seems like he was following the creature forever, trekking down some unseen path only Gods and Godbeasts knew about. Richie is beginning to doubt they’re ever going to reach what this thing is trying to show him, but then it stops at the mouth of a small open clearing and Richie stops too.

“Look at that,” The thing says, and this time it’s voice is mostly inhuman; it’s mancing, and mocking, it’s like toxic slime. It sounds like it’s something he shouldn’t be hearing, like how he feels when he listens to recordings people took of ghosts talking to them. “She’s crying.”

The figure moves aside and behind him, in the center of the clearing, stands a stone angel. It takes Richie a moment, but he recognizes it as the one in the cupboard under the stairs, only much larger, lifesized; she’s standing over an open hole in the ground and she’s crying. Her eyes are blackened voids of nothingness. The tears trickling down her face are rose red, blood red, and they’re soaking into the dirt below her. Richie feels all the sadness of the world in his heart for a moment, and he suddenly feels very sorry for her, and wishes he could help her, but he doesn’t understand how. He wants to ask her why she’s crying, and tell her that she’s very beautiful. As he makes his way towards her, the shadowed figure still lurking, watching him, it’s horrific grin still stretched wide, he suddenly feels as if he’s being choked by fear. 

He’s standing before her now, with only a square hole in the ground separating them. Richie watches, in horror, as her stone mouth suddenly turns up into a leering grin. Slowly her hands break apart, little bits of rubble crumbling off as she points her finger down towards the hole. She’s trying to show him something. Richie looks down into the hole now, for the first time, and screams. 

His grandmother is down there, decaying in the dirt. There’s a terrible smell of rotting meat, and Richie can see maggots swarming inside the open cavity of her chest, squirming in and out of her eye sockets and jaw. Plump, ugly black flies are soaring up at him, buzzing in his ear. He wants to tear his eyes away but he can’t. He is all too aware of the black shadowy figure, slowly creeping on him, but he can’t move or do anything about it. 

“Faith is a living thing,” it says, right in his ear now. It’s the same inhuman voice as before. Suddenly Richie is falling forward- no, not falling, being _pushed._ Into the open mouth of the grave, rushing towards the dirt and the maggots and the decay and the death below him, rushing to be buried for all of eternity and forgotten about, rushing towards-

Richie jerks awake with a gasp, his heart racing. He can taste blood in his mouth, as though he had bit his tongue in his sleep. The blankets around him are damp from his sweat, and he peels them back, fumbling for his glasses and squinting against the light of the sun. For a moment he just sits in bed, relieved to be awake after such a strange nightmare. His hands are still shaking a little, but he’s ready to go about his day and slowly forget. 

Richie gets up, but something catches his eye. Sitting on his dresser, with her back turned towards him, winds spread out like a stone fan, was the angel from the cupboard. Richie freezes for a second, his mind turning like gears while he tried to figure out where the angel could have possibly come from. There has to be a rational answer for it, of course. He decides that maybe he gotten up and grabbed the thing in his sleep, since it had been on his mind, or maybe that his mother had put it there. Those seemed like logical things to accept, and so he does, grabbing the angel and returning it to it’s spot in the cupboard before his mother wakes up and notices it missing and decides he needs to spend some more time in there. 

He waits to forget the dream but he doesn’t. Something's still ringing in his head, something the shadowed beast had said. _Faith is a living thing._ It scares him to his core.

**Author's Note:**

> i might do another part to this but i'm not sure lmao. i wanted practice trying to write creepy things?? or like?dream logic?? and i always love ominous religious things


End file.
